Nominations open for Mountain Heritage Award

Western Carolina University is accepting nominations for the Mountain Heritage Award, an honor bestowed annually on one individual and one organization that has played a prominent role in the preservation or interpretation of Southern Appalachian history and culture.

Letters of nomination should not exceed five pages, and include a list of the nominee’s accomplishments, their influence in the relevant field of expertise (such as crafts, music or organizational cause), and their role as a teacher, advocate, leader or preserver of mountain culture.

This Must Be the Place

Standing in line at the Old Europe coffee shop in downtown Asheville, I said that to my old friend, Jerica. It was a rainy Sunday evening and we’d just gotten out of a documentary screening (about Tim Leary and Ram Dass) at the Grail Moviehouse. While I was mulling over the cosmic nature and theme of the film and what our place is in the universe (as per usual), I looked over at Jerica and smiled.

Reading Room

Of course, we’re intended to read from cover to cover many books — novels, histories, biographies, and more. It would make little sense to begin Mark Helprin’s novel A Soldier of the Great War on page 340 of its 860 pages. We might open and commence reading Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat, on page 241, but we’d miss some of the…